Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes form the line of John Lawrence with Morgan, Keegan. Please go ahead.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
Good morning.
Sam Susser
Good morning John.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
I don’t know, Sam, if you want to take this or Mary goes through it. But if you walk through and just on the operating expenses a little bit, Mary you broke out some of those and certainly, could we just run back through some of the increases. I mean, obviously credit card, you called that was about $3 million?
Mary Sullivan
Right. Credit card is healthy, John, where we are seeing the challenges this year in the operating expenses.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
Right. And then, you are throwing, say, $1 million from the hurricane additional expenses, so would that be about $4 million to $5 million, right there?
Mary Sullivan
[No].
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
If you put the credit card utilities.
Sam Susser
Bring those buckets John, utility costs were up about $3.4 million...
Mary Sullivan
3.4.
Sam Susser
?.utility costs.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
Okay.
Mary Sullivan
And credit card were up 2.8.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
Okay.
Mary Sullivan
At this pro forma last year.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
Yeah. Okay. Then, if you put in the $1 million from the hurricane, so that explains a lot of that going at this point?
Sam Susser
Those are the big drivers in our operating expense lines and [run rate] two big things, the utility cost and credit card cost. Utilities is for us really tied to the natural gas price, but it lags. It will be 60, 90-day kind of lag before we see improvement in natural gas rolling through the P&L?
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
Right.
Sam Susser
?vice versa is on the way up. And credit card fees, that's real time. So that's very, very much a direct relationship to the retail price of a gallon a fuel.
John Lawrence - Morgan, Keegan & Company
And just to comment quickly on the, if you will, I know we've talked at length about the Town & Country source getting better end stocks on certain products. I would assume that that led the part of this improvement. Is that still part of the [route] structure et cetera?
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